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Hey there everybody! I am new to beekeeping and I was wondering if I should use a shallow super with thin foundation for cut comb honey or go up to a medium super for this? Also...should I be using a queen excluder when I put the supers on? Thanks a lot!....TN

I only use the deep 9 5/8 inch for the brood nest and the 6 5/8 inch suppers for everything else extracting or cut comb. This way I only have to deal with 2 frame sizes. I usually do not use queen excluders at all. Most of my older hives are 3 9 5/8 bodys tall to start with before suppers are added and the queen rarely goes higher than 3 in my experience.
Clint

I would use the mediums also for the same reasons. Less different sizes. The shallow supers should sag less, but the difference is negligeble. Both the shallow and the mediums sag if you put them on too soon or let them set around outside on hot days. If you don't put the supers on until the bees are ready for them it should work fine. BTW when doing cut comb I buy the 7/11 foundation from Kelleys. It's half way between drone and worker size so the queen doesn't like to lay in it. I sometimes use queen excluders, but I prefer to just give he queen enough room and let the bees have free access.

[This message has been edited by Michael Bush (edited February 28, 2003).]

You'll get 100 different answers here and none are wrong. I use shallow boxes and 9 5/8 for supers and have used both for cut comb. So as you can see use what you want. Ask your self if you are in a good honey area. If you have a short flow and the girls can't draw and cap a deep for cut comb don't use them for that. Same with medium or shallow boxes. If I had to do it over I'd use the mediums but I inherited many shallow boxes (free) so I stuck with them so as not to have mixed frame sizings. As for the queen excluder, well it depends on how you manage the colony. If you cut down to a single...yes. If not you may not need to but if you want to play it safe sure. If using the excluder I would wait till the girls started drawning the foundation then slip them in. Some times bees will not push through them to get to foundation and could trigger swarming impulse. Other times some colonies will cross them like nothing is there.

Actually it depends on your whole plan for keeping bees. Do you want to run deeps for the hive boxes? Then you have to have some other size for the supers, and shallow or medium will work fine. Deeps for supers are just too heavy. When I raised just comb honey, I ran deeps for the brood and shallows for the honey. When I bought an extractor I went to deeps for brood and mediums for extracted honey, and since I'd like to standardize (after all the old mixed up equipment I have deterioates) I decided I'd just buy mediums for all my honey.

Then I found PermaComb, which is only available in medium and I found some hives of survivor feral bees, which were in mediums and I decided I'd just standardize on that. All in all, it really doesn't make that much difference except weight and standardization.

But if I was only rasing comb honey and I was using deeps for brood, I'd get shallows.

If I was extracting and doing comb honey and I really wanted to standardize, I'd go to all mediums for everything including brood.

If I was extracting and doing comb honey and I really wanted deeps for brood chambers, I'd go to deeps for brood and pick either mediums or shallows, one or the other, for everything else. But I'd try not to get all three just because it makes life simpler.

I'm one to talk. I have DE hives in mediums and deeps, and Lanstroths in shallow, medium and deep, so I have five different kinds of frames and five different sizes of foundation (not counting diferent KINDS of foundation e.g. drone, small cell, 7/11, surplus, medium brood, RiteCell, Pierco, etc.)

I mentioned this on a previous post but thought it would be helpful here also. If you have flat queen excluders, plastics or metal bound, place the queen excluder (when needed) at opposite direction than what you normally would lay them on. This will cause the excluder to hang out the hive an inch or so on two sides. The queen usually does not work the very edge of the frames and therefore doesn't make it around the end of the excluder. The workers still have an inch to the front and the back which inhibits them less. I also drill a hole in the super for the workers to have another free access point into the super. Plug with a cork when not needed. I like the flat excluders so there is no room for extra burr comb as with the standard wood bound excluders.

Re: Super Size?

I use the Medium frames for cut comb you can cut the square out of the middle of the frames and then use the piece of comb at the bottom of the frame for chunk honey in the jar so none of it goes to waste.

Re: Super Size?

I've made one deep and one nuc 11.5" deep, made my own frames, and will use regular deep foundation. Should be interesting to see how this works out compared to my standard deeps. I made narrow frames (1.25") as well, should give the queen lots of room in a single box if all works out well. I plan to use two mediums for stores, one under, one over and checkerboard in the late winter.

As far as cut comb goes, you should use whatever size box your bees will fill quickly if you use thin surplus foundation, as it will droop badly as soon as the weather gets hot if they don't draw it out soon after you put it on.

Re: Super Size?

We are digging up ten year old threads????? We have been hanging out here over ten years???? We have wasted how much time here???? We don't have anything better to do????? How old am I????
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Re: Super Size?

I have used a substantial amount of 11 1/4" deep frames since 1979 in both 16 1/4" and 19 7/8" wide boxes. I made 70 new frames Jumbo and 70 new deep this year. I like them for the large brood laying area the queen gets and the capability to run single brood chamber hives with enough room for laying and winter stores. The frames are available from Rossman and the foundation from Dadant. Recently I have been stacking old 5 3/8" and 5 1/4" deep foundation in a farme which overlap about 1/4". This old foundation pre-dates miticides and uses up supplies on hand, giving me more funds to pay for lunch.